The Emperor and Darth Vader entered, startling Luke and Mara awake. Mara scampered to her feet yet again, bowing. "M-my Master," she stuttered out.
The Emperor looked suspiciously at her, but beneath his tough exterior she could detect the hint of glee. In a commanding tone, he ordered, "Mara Jade, follow me."
Mara nodded, fear apparent on her face, and obliged.
Darth Vader turned to Luke after they left, his body language signifying clearly that he was angry. "Come with me, Son," he sternly told him. "I do not want you to have anything to do with the Emperor's servants, whether he does or not. Today, you are going to be subjected to something different than traditional torture...Unless you wish to give in ahead of time?"
"Never," Luke told him defiantly, reaching inside himself for the strength that he knew he would need.
"Very well. Come with me," the black-armored Sith Lord said, his breath mask hissing ominously.
Vader led his son to a large room, and Luke suppressed the urge to say what was on his mind. I have a really bad feeling about this.
There was a huge durasteel cage nearly hidden in strangely shifting shadows. Using the Force, Vader opened the cage's large barred door and threw Luke unceremoniously inside of it.
His son was stubborn, but hopefully this particular experience would change his mind.
Luke tried shaking the bars, but as soon as he touched them he received an electrical shock. He tried to use the Force to open the door, but Vader prevented him from doing so. "You must kill the creature."
Luke didn't want to kill anything, much less some beast. He'd had enough encounters with wampas, dianogas, and rancors. He didn't want to add another monster to the list. Nevertheless, he gulped in anticipation, steeled himself, and tried to peer into the shadows. He heard a low snoring noise, then a snuffling sound, and two big, luminous red eyes opened. The beast snarled deep inside its throat and slowly stalked forward.
As it came closer to the light, Luke got a better view of it. It was equine, with a muscular black body, and a white, sharp bristly mane. On the huge creature's forehead were two gray striped and pointed horns, and on the back of its leg, just above its hooves, were sharp spurs. It had two human-like black arms on its barrel, which were waving about in an eerie manner, and its tail resembled a krayt dragon's in that it was perilously spiked.
It whinnied, baring its fangs threateningly. The beast pawed the ground roughly, albeit hesitantly, then after a second of thought it charged purposefully at Luke. After a split second when all of his remains of self-control fled, Luke tried to fall and hit the ground for leverage to roll away, but the beast was too swift for him, and Luke received a glancing blow on his shoulder. He fell to the ground, his shoulder burning as if a flame were raging within it. Luke grimaced and brought his hand protectively to his shoulder, pressing hard to try to stop the blood flow.
The dangerous animal reared but came down on thin air. It shook its mane, spying him on its right. It rushed at him, and its horn struck Luke's shoulder again.
The horn, which was long and incredibly sharp, went in deeply, but, fortunately, it didn't quite come out on the other side. Luke cried out in pain, trying to yank his shoulder back. The beast helped him in that it shook him off its horn.
Next, it attempted to trample him as a means of death. It succeeded in slashing his arm with its spurs and crushing his right foot. The shattered bone of his ankle poked through his skin, and he yelled again, hurting and bleeding badly as he rolled out of the way. After getting a quick look at his foot, he moaned in frustration.
Luke scrambled to get up, remaining unsteadily on his one good foot. The beast growled and charged. Using the Force, Luke jumped into the air and managed to get on its back.
This was a new experience for it, and the equine creature went into a mad rage, bucking wildly. Luke held on for his life, in spite of his being continuously slapped in the face by the creature's mane's sharp bristles. His face was welting up, and his eye was swollen shut. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was barely able to maintain his grip—his hands were being assaulted as well. The beast tried to remove his legs, which were clasped tightly around its barrel, with its creepy human-like arms.
The creature's tail lashed up angrily. It kept hitting Luke's back with its sharp spikes, yet somehow he still kept his grip. It then started ramming into the side of its cage as a method of getting rid of him. Both the beast and Luke released loud howls of pain as the electrical current coursed through their bodies.
It roared, neighed, and started bucking harder, flinging Luke off to the side. He hit the floor with a sickening thud and a low moan.
The beast was surprised that it was rid of its burden, and it decided to punish him for the trouble he'd caused. It reared again, and its forelegs landed on Luke's stomach, hard enough to cause him to vomit. Though the force wasn't enough to crush his chest, the spurs dug into his thorax harshly.
Luke managed to crawl weakly out of the way, and the beast's angry red eyes followed him. It whinnied, and he took in a shaky breath. Using the Force, Luke somehow managed to hoist himself up onto the creature's back again. With another roar of rage, it started shaking itself madly to throw him off. Luke concentrated on holding on, and, as the idea came to him, also on slowing the beast's heart. It began to wheeze and ramble about. It finally stood up on its hind legs, causing him to drop down from its back, and then it, too, fell. It collapsed on Luke, dead.
When Luke had hit the ground, it had nearly paralyzed his back, and the sheer weight of the beast landing on him was certainly nothing to sneer at either. It weighed several hundred pounds at least, and the dead creature, though its full weight wasn't on him, was slowly crushing his ribcage. It was hard work for Luke to breathe, remain conscious, and use the Force to ease off some of the pressure from the creature's weight. On top of it all, the beast's horn had managed to slash a nasty gash in Luke's cheek when its head had jerked as it fell.
Vader opened the cage's door and walked to his son. He looked down at him. "Use the Force to remove it." Vader hated being so cold, but the Emperor was watching them via surveillance cameras, and he saw any warmth as weakness.
"Father—please..." Luke begged, coughing up blood. He could feel his life draining out of him as it became more difficult to breathe.
Feeling that perhaps his son had suffered enough for one day and that maybe the Emperor wouldn't be too angry with his interference, he removed the beast from atop the boy. He really didn't want to hurt his son, but Luke was giving him no other choice. Vader asked the inevitable question: "Is this enough to convince you to turn? You can get immediate medical attention, if you do so."
Despite his weakened condition, Luke managed to reply indignantly, "I'll never join you." He spat at his father's feet. "I would rather die a thousand deaths."
"So be it. But you will turn, someday," Vader rumbled, ignoring the saliva on the ground in front of him. "It is your destiny."
Destiny was something Luke had had enough of, and right now all he was worried about was inhaling and exhaling. Vader loomed over him and ordered him to get to his feet. It was a very slow process, but Luke managed to climb up with a little help from the Force. Darth Vader walked out of the cage, not slowing his pace even a notch for Luke. Luke hobbled after him on his good leg, using the Force yet again to assist him. It would be useless to try to run away, so Luke just followed him to the best of his injured ability.
Vader led his prisoner to his cell, pushing Luke inside with the Force. "Rest well." A timed pause. "You only get an hour to do it," he said, leaving his son alone. Once outside the cell, he brushed Luke with a concealed Force probe and found that the damage wasn't fatal. He heaved an inward sigh of relief.
Wincing, Luke drug himself over to the wall, leaned back, and concentrated mainly on breathing and healing himself. A few minutes later, Mara entered with a sneer and a sharp reprimand on her lips, but her jaw dropped and the words died unsaid. She stood wide-eyed in the doorframe as she surveyed his condition. Luke looked up at her through his one good eye for a fraction of a second, then he pulled his gaze down down to the floor. "What'd he do to you!" Mara exclaimed.
Shutting his non-swollen eye tightly, Luke grunted an answer: "Beast."
Mara's eyes widened in understanding. "It must have been one of the Emperor's newest pets—one of the Deh'th'tu'thouw." Luke looked at her skeptically, "He thought it was a funny name...So far he's only used them to kill people that greatly angered him. You're the only survivor to date. He has a few breeders, and one recently had a rather large litter...Was it long-haired or short-haired? What color?"
Laboriously, Luke wheezed, "Short. Black 'n' white."
"Ah...That was a larva then."
Luke opened his eye, "Larva? Wasn' nuttin' like a grub."
"I know it's not a very accurate term. But there are three stages they go through. There's the larval stage, in which they are very temperamental, as you can tell by the one you were mauled by; there's the second stage, in which they are very well-armored—the Emperor refers to that as the cocoon stage; and there's the last stage, which he calls 'The Final Metamorphosis.' Believe me, you never want to battle the final stage..." The Emperor's Hand gave a sly grin. "Of course, you never want to fight any stage, but you know what I mean..." Mara walked over to him and sat down. She bit her tongue, wondering how to start dressing his wounds. "Do you want me to help with the Force, or just physically?"
Luke answered perhaps too quickly, "Force."
She looked at him quizzically, but she soon reached out to the Force and concentrated on healing his deeper wounds. "You might want to go into a trance..."
Luke hadn't wanted it to come to that, since healing trances took a while to be effective and he only had an hour available to use, but it was probably the best he could do for now, seeing as he lacked a bacta tank. Nodding, he brought the Force about him, and before long he was lost in that cryptic place Jedi went when they entered a trance.
Mara delicately brushed the sweaty hair out of Luke's face after bringing some fresh water from the kitchen to clean his wounds with. She ripped off part of his ragged shirt and dampened it, gently dabbing it on his wounds to remove dirt. After a little more first aid, there was nothing more she could do with the limited materials at hand. Only several hours in that healing trance, or a long bacta dip, would do him good now. Unfortunately, he could have neither. She reluctantly left the room. She knew that she didn't want to be here when Vader came back. He had never liked her, and the new role she was supposed to play didn't help with matters.